Life thrust marriage at Frank, like you would a bribe in the hands of an unwilling official. He didn’t go looking for it like some men who plan engagements with a ring, bended knees and starry eyes. He was a bystander in life when fate veered off its path and hit him with a wife.

What happened was that he liked this girl who lived with her parents 200 meters from his house. She was older and hella sexy. She also had a penchant for making him laugh. If you knew Frank, you would know that that wasn’t an easy feat. Her dad was a badass, never smiled with anyone in the estate as should dads who have sexy daughters because when you smile with these phallic-excitable boys they will take it as an invitation, open season to start speaking to your daughter. They will get too familiar. So he always scowled, ignoring Frank and other young types in the estate. But Frank is the type of guy who slips through the eye of the needle silently. So before long the girl was sneaking into his house on her way from work, making them a meal and they were boffing like rabbits. One chill Sunday afternoon she told him casually as they lay in bed in various states of undress that she had missed her period. He remembered thinking, what?! As if he had been a virgin all through. As if he didn’t know how fertilization worked. The next day after work she peed on a stick. A red line glared back at them.

Of course her father was going to kill him. He was going to dismember him and spread his limbs all over the city; an arm in Ngong, a leg in Uthiru, another leg in a farm in Kitengela, a head buried near Kamiti – his body parts a homicidal jigsaw puzzle.

There are two types of men in this scenario where one finds oneself with a pregnant girlfriend. The first is the type who sneaks out in the middle of the night, never to return. The other type says, “Fine, why don’t you move in with me, then?” And that’s how some women transition into wives. Frank is the second type of chap. But since her father looked murderous, he decided to play this by the book; he had to officially go their shags and announce his intentions before the pregnancy became a matter of public scrutiny.

“All of a sudden I had moved from this guy who lived alone to a guy who was about to become a husband and a father. I didn’t have time to process my impending transition and what it meant. I had to look for money and go visit her parents,” he says. “Problem was that I was broke. I work in one of the local banks and banks pay shit, you know that.”

He then started selling weed to raise funds. Why weed? Why not charcoal or capsicum? Well, he had been smoking weed since 2013. He knew how it worked, what good weed was and where to get it. There was money in weed because there are tens of hundreds of people who smoke it. Good weed, according to him, was from Kahawa area. “I had friends in Kahawa, and there was this pal of mine called Brayo [it’s always a Brayo] who knew the dealers. Do you stone, by the way?”

“Stone?” I ask. He’s 27-years old. Stone at my tender age of 41 is a piece of rock, something you can use in a riot. However, I know what to be “stoned” is; it’s to be high. I didn’t want to take chances though, because in 2019 to “stone” could mean anything.

“To stone is to smoke weed.”

“No. I don’t stone,” I say.

Anyway, he makes calls to Brayo, who makes calls to other guys and a kilogram of weed is bought and rolled and he gets a guy who pushes the product for him. Frank holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree, so he figured he’d stretch it.

“One kilogram of weed was like 20K and if I sold it in a week or two max, I’d make like 60K,” he says. “I was starting to make more from selling weed than working in the bank.” He could have said screw this job and gotten into the trade with both feet but he realised that he needed a cover, a legitimate career, as he sold his weed.

He raised 100K, gathered his people and together, they went to visit his girlfriend’s people past Thika huko, I forget the name. He sat quietly as the proceedings went on, allowing his older relatives to navigate the introductions. He was a graduate, he worked in an important bank, he combed his hair, he had clean shoes and he spoke well. They approved of him.

His girlfriend moved in with him as a wife as her bump grew bigger and bigger. They started fighting over silly things at first and he thought, aah, it’s the hormones. She is stressed from carrying all that weight, plus she must not enjoy how swollen her legs are and how big her nose has become. Then she started saying she hated it when he smoked weed, that she didn’t want him bringing weed to the house. So he stopped smoking it. “All this time she didn’t know that I was selling weed, of course, but she knew I was smoking it occasionally, from back when we were dating,” he says.

We are at the new Coco Jambo in Valley Arcade, seated at one of those long tables in the main bar. He’s having a Tusker, I’m having a whisky, and Wanjiku, with whom I was having a drink as I waited for him, is having a liqueur. We are also joined by a million mosquitoes and the waiters have to light some mosquito coils around us.

“I had a maternity cover from work that was so small it couldn’t adequately cover her at the hospital she wanted to give birth in. By this time everything was just irritating her, so I needed to raise more money to take her to the hospital she wanted,” he says.

One day during his lunch break at the bank Brayo rings him and says, “Dude, I have a pal called Salim from Eastleigh who says that there is some good, high quality weed from Moyale which we can sell and really make a killing.” He says, “Oh yeah?” Brayo says, “Yeah, I think we should get this stuff instead of the weak stuff we’ve been buying.” He continues, “We need to go straight to the source for this to make business sense.” Frank laughs and says, “The source is Moyale!” Brayo says, “Yeah, cut out the middle men!” Frank says, “That’s a mad idea. How are we going to get all that weed back to Nairobi?” Brayo says, “I know a guy.”

Enter, Salim.

They sell this business idea to their weed-smoking friends – chaps in their mid 20s, mostly professionals who you are likely to see waiting for printouts at office printers. The idea is for them to grab the opportunity. They are sold. A few days later they all agree to meet Salim. They – the famous six – wait for Salim in a cafe in town. Salim turns out to be a lanky chap with rows of small teeth, like a barracuda. He speaks fast and in small jerky sentences as if his words are running out of fuel. The plan is for all of them to raise cash and travel to Moyale to buy this special weed. They will also split the cost of transporting the weed back to Nairobi, which they will then pick up in Eastleigh. They ask Salim, “How are we sure that we will get our stash in Nairobi? What if something happens? What are the guarantees?” Salim leans back and says simply, “Leave it to me,” like someone who has done this umpteen times.

The next day Frank applies for leave. A week later, they go downtown and hop into a ratty Moyale-bound bus, the six of them spread all over the loud bus in order not to arouse any suspicion. They are all graduates. They are all in their 20s. They all are in this weed business to supplement their incomes – the half of them who have jobs at least. Moyale is between the toes of the country, it turns out. It takes them 16 hours and many police roadblocks to get there. It’s dark when they finally arrive at the tiny village at the edge of the town. A perfect full moon the size of a giant saucer hangs over them, presiding over their entrance. All sound has fallen away. Trees look like amputated arms of ghosts that refuse to grow in the dry earth. They pass lone huts that in darkness look like humps of hippos. It’s hot and musky, their shirts cling to their backs.

A skinny man receives them and leads them to a compound where they are settled in a hut with a low roof and tiny windows. A lantern emitting soft light dangles from the roof. They spend the night seated, backs against the wall, shooting the breeze, smoking weed shirtless and waiting for dawn. Occasionally someone would leave to piss into the darkness outside, hoping they don’t piss on a sleeping camel. If sleep came, it came in little pockets in form of a nap filled with adrenaline.

At dawn they all step out to lay their eyes on Moyale in the light of day; dry, dusty and inhabited by goats and men in sandals. They wash their faces from a cupful of water and then the skinny man says, “Okay, now we walk to Ethiopia.” So they set off on foot. They are in vests and open shoes because it’s blazing hot. Frank calls the man a “pedi”, the word they use for peddler. (Imagine now a pedi who gets a pedi.) In a file led by the pedi, they walk slowly in the rising dust until all civilisation falls behind them and it’s just them and gnarled trees and a sky with not one ball of cloud. It’s hot and they are sweating. Their feet are now so dusty you can’t tell where the earth ends and their feet begin. They start looking like part of the landscape.

They cross the border, which isn’t much to speak of because there is nothing specifically that shows that you are now crossing into Ethiopia, and they walk for another hour to finally come upon a large farm where the special weed is grown. They are received by an Ethiopian, the man who runs shit there. He has a crooked nose, perhaps good for smelling trouble. He shakes their hands, one at a time, while mumbling something in Amharic.He then gives them a tour of the farm, telling them about the weed and why it’s worth the trip from Kenya. They are shown their stash, which will be sent to the village in Moyale on a badass donkey (the money had been sent before hand), and which will find itself onto a bus (the weed, not the donkey) and will come to Nairobi and land in Eastleigh. The boys will then send their pedis to go pick, sort and start selling the weed.

That all takes two weeks. Unlike food from UberEats, you can’t monitor the progress of the weed; you just wait and trust that it will get to Nairobi. Indeed, it gets to them two weeks later.

Business blows up in Kahawa and Juja. Their clientele are mostly university students, touts and drivers. Word goes around that there is some good weed doing the rounds. Everybody wants it. Frank never goes to the ground, he largely runs his business from the bank. He’s a bank teller. I ask him how he manages to do that Aren’t tellers not allowed to use their phones at work? “I have my phone in my pocket at work, and we mostly operate on SMSes. If there is something I need to handle I will call during my break. But at the end of the week I’d go down to meet my pedi and we would reconcile our books,” he says.

“We were doing so well that this one time the six of us were at a party in Juja and these guys were talking about this new strain of weed that was so dope, not knowing that the guys who brought it in were right there in that house.” He chuckles. Frank doesn’t do eye contact. When he speaks, he looks straight ahead as if reading from a teleprompter.

Then in 2017, his son is born in the hospital his wife wanted which, unbeknownst to her, was paid for by the money from his weed business. He names the boy after his father who died when he was four years old. He’s now a new father. “I was someone’s father now and I felt the weight of it, the responsibility,” he says. The first day he brings his wife and the baby home, he sits at the edge of their bed and looks at the little thing swathed in a bundle like a parcel, only slightly bigger than the weed parcels they sell.

Life continues. His business is thriving. He wakes up and goes to the bank, sits at the counter and smiles at his customers and says things like, “Kindly write your ID number here and sign here, here and here,” and, “How are you today, Mr Kisero? Would you like that in dollars or Kenya shillings?” and “Do you want some of this on M-Pesa?” During his lunch break he’s on the phone, moving weed from one location to another, monitoring his sales, saying things like, “Haina ngori, mali inamak.”

Back at home the marriage wasn’t going as planned. “She just didn’t seem satisfied with anything anymore,” he says. The harder he worked, the more fights they seemed to be having.

But his wife was the least of his problems because, unbeknownst to him, the Kenya Government in the form of the “long arm of the law” had gotten wind of their new brand of weed and was silently shaking up folk for information on its source and dealers. They grabbed one of their pedis at a bus terminus in Kahawa West when he tried selling it to one of their undercover agents. They walked with him to a riverbank and tried to get him to talk but he was a man of honour. He wasn’t going to snitch. So they told him that he had to leave town or they would find him and drop him. (For all the old guys at the back reading us from country clubs, ‘drop him’ doesn’t mean give him a lift. It means kill him.)

“Word spread that cops were now on our tail so we had to be very careful. I stopped my weekly visits to Juja. The six of us avoided being together in a room. I minimised communication on SMS with my pedi and made calls instead,’’ he says. Basically shit we watch on Homeland. I could see him at the bank’s breakout area at lunch, making a call and then removing the sim card, snapping it in two and disposing of it in the dustbin. Of course, I’m being over the top. I’m sure none of that ever happened.

“One day I got a call from Brayo, saying that some of our friends had been busted at a party in a house belonging to this engineering student and hauled into the police cell,” he says. “We got them out by paying 30K and after that I knew that everything had to change. The cops were now too close for comfort.” Not long after, Salim disappeared. “We tried to reach him for days but couldn’t find him. We freaked out because we knew they had either killed him or he was in jail. Then one day he showed up, nervous, shifty and restless, and he told us what had happened. Apparently the cops had found him and driven him to the swimming pool at Kasarani at night. They told him that they knew he had brought in some weed from Moyale. He was made to lie down with his head hanging over the edge of the swimming pool and they placed a gun to his head and told him that if he ever sold weed again in this town they’d bring him back there and kill him. They told him to leave Nairobi if he wanted to stay alive. “The last time we saw him was that day in 2017. He was really shaken. He said he was going back to shags, Nairobi had become too dangerous.”

Meanwhile Frank was still smoking weed occasionally and spraying himself before he got home because wives can smell deceit and bullshit, perfumes that don’t belong to you, strange soaps, sweet smelling hand lotions and hugs. He was hiding from her.

He had to change his business model. He struck a deal with his pedi. He told him he would not be involved with buying the weed anymore. Instead, he would loan him an amount of money, like a capital investment, and the pedi would use it to buy the weed, sell it and in turn he would remit a certain amount of money to him every week for a year. The math added up. He turned into a financier, as opposed to a dealer. So every week he would get his share of the cut. I asked him how he trusted the guy enough to expect his cut weekly.

“Well, some weeks he would claim to have had bad sales but I made my money back in a few weeks time and what I was getting was purely profit, so I wasn’t stressing. Besides, he always paid me my share.” Sounds like something from an episode of Sopranos, the honour thing.

This went on smoothly for a while and would have gone on forever if a friend of his – a nutritionist – had not told him about her cancer patient who was undergoing chemo and had zero appetite, flesh falling off her bones.

“She asked me if I could get her weed, which she would extract and mix with porridge for this patient. It seemed like an okay idea, so I started handling weed again, supplying her. Amazingly her patient – who didn’t know that her porridge had weed – started getting an appetite and eating and putting on some weight,” he says. “Everything was fine. I was happy, my friend was happy and the cancer patient was even happier, all the time taking our weed.” He laughs.

Things took a turn when one day the cancer patient’s 8-year old daughter took the same porridge by mistake and the lady’s husband noticed that their daughter was acting funny – she was spaced out. On investigation, he found out that the porridge had weed and he hit the roof. The nutritionist was fired and Frank lost that, erm, account.

And when it rains it pours because soon after his wife found weed in one of his bags and was so mad she took pictures that she sent to his family members. “She was so angry. She felt cheated. We had a row. I was angry that she involved my whole family in this. She said she was not going to raise her child with a weed dealer. I asked her how she thought I sustained the family on a lousy bank salary. ‘You have seen my payslip. How do you think all this is paid for? How do you think I paid for your maternity and stuff? How do you think I pay for everything in this house?’”

She didn’t care; she packed her bags and left in an Uber, took his son with her. “That day I remember crying because of losing my son. The house became so empty,” he says.

His mother was even more disappointed to hear that he was dealing weed. The night she came to see him after his wife left, they spoke for many hours and she was categorical; “You have to stop selling weed. It’s not who we are. It’s not how I raised you. It’s wrong. If you want money I can be giving you money, but you are not a drug dealer.”

“My mother is everything, man. I even have a tattoo of her here.” He shows me a tattoo of his mom’s name. “She was disappointed in me given that she had struggled to raise us after my father died. She said that my wife was right, that selling drugs was like being a drug dealer.” So he stopped dealing.

“Do you think you were a drug dealer?”

“No. I was selling a product with less effects than ciggies,” he says. “I don’t see how she couldn’t understand that I was making sacrifices for the family that I would never make for anyone else. I wasn’t going to make ends meet with my bank salary. We were going to starve.”

“Would you recommend weed to your own son?” I ask.

“If he is underage, no!”

“So if he was 18 would you be fine with him smoking weed.? An adult can smoke weed.”

He pauses. He’s looking faraway where his teleprompter is. His brow has a thin film of perspiration. He shrugs and says it’s a matter of perception, like the chicken and egg. He has no regrets selling weed to provide for his family. He doesn’t see himself as a drug dealer because “weed isn’t like cocaine or heroin.” He asks me if I think El Chapo’s wife saw him as a drug dealer or as a provider. He can’t get over the fact that his wife tarnished his name to his family members. That she refused to come back. He thinks her punishment was too severe for the transgression. “I think she left for other reasons, not because of weed. I think she left because she found me young. She was a few years older than me. Maybe she found me childish. I don’t know.”

“Do you miss her?”

“Sometimes. I miss how she challenged me to be better at work and even as a person. During the time we were together I grew. Friendship came before love for the two of us. We still talk and laugh. We don’t hate each other.”

He sees his son all the time. When he talks about his son he smiles that sweet boyish smile. When we leave he gives Wanjiku a stick of weed. He calls it a flower. “Tell me what you think,” he tells her.

Frank is now a full-time banker with no distractions. His phone never rings with updates from his pedi. He wears a tie daily, something he hates because a tie, he says, represents “slavery.” Which means he feels imprisoned in that job. So after working hours, he leaves his tie in his drawer and he’s free. He’s 27-years old and separated. He still smokes weed occasionally. He’s a father who lost because of “providing” for his family. At 27-years he also has that laissez-faire thing going on; maybe he will meet another woman and marry her, maybe he will just stay the way he is. I ask him if he smoked something before coming to meet me because he had said he was nervous. He says he wishes he had smoked something earlier today because “bank clients are a pain in the ass.”

Well, for now his nose is clean. He wears a tie and politely tells those clients, “Please sign here, here and here.”

***

I feel bad that I have no announcement to make here today; the writing masterclass is on tomorrow and I have enough Men and Marriage interviews to last another month. So perhaps I should just say that if you are not underweight, haven’t been in jail the last ten days, or doesn’t do drugs, haven’t had sex lately with anyone who takes money or drugs or other payment for sex, or is breastfeeding could you kindly go donate blood at any major hospital? There is someone who will lose a lot of blood during surgery this weekend and they will need your blood more than you will. Plus they will give you a cold Fanta after you donate.

We are also joined by a million mosquitoes and the waiters have to light some mosquito coils around us… I can’t believe these mosquitos have made it to the blog… they famous now. Thank you for writing Biko

Life thrust marriage at Frank, like you would a bribe in the hands of an unwilling official. He didn’t go looking for it like some men who plan engagements with a ring, bended knees and starry eyes. He was a bystander in life when fate veered off its path and hit him with a wife.

Becoming a father increases your capacity for love and your level of patience. It opens up another door in a person – a door which you may not even have known was there. His greatest mistake as it is.. Was being the father he is and being a provider.. Sad!!

Hahaha, I also think the punishment was too great for the transgression.
But women sometimes will have left the relationship years ago and constantly looking for a loophole/reason to finally walk away and absolve ourselves of the responsibility of having to end things.

Also, am I the only 1 wondering if Biko has a lawyer on standby in the event that this story goes south?
Client-writer privilege?
Imagine Frank has played it safe all those years only to come and be nubbed when he was simply telling his story.

Naah, I think Biko does proper cover ups. As I read, I imagine Frank is called Sam, a 40 year old a clinical officer somewhere, deals weed but from Uganda (or smuggles in goods, no taxes paid) and certainly knows no Salim or Brayo. The tracks are all well covered like that.

I am do glad he stopped selling weed, it doesn’t matter that it has less effect than ciggies, it should be a controlled substance- sane as poisons and medicines. @Biko, there is always a third option, you don’t marry the girl and cause a whirlwind of broken people, you raise the child, be a man. If you ever hear country music or soft rock, you will learn and know that on this rock we live in, there is always another way. See you at the blood drive, if you miss it Rotary are having another … You can always do mankind a service with what you have on this side of heaven.

Okay, am from night shift in some strange country and been here waiting for the article thinking am gonna be the first to see it…. Kumbe!! This is a real addiction. Anyway got some reading to do. Cheers Zuluman

Although no evil is a lesser evil,Frank is a better criminal since he robs no one or kills anyone but sells weed to willing buyers. And he is a diligent and smart guy…and so human.He didnt take to the hills when he learnt his gf was expecting and bailed out his pedi…a great read like always

I agree with you. The only problem here comes when you try to imagine its your younger siblings or even kids who are hooked to weed and constantly ‘stoned’. Eventually they’ll become addicts who can’t function without it and in the long run they wouldn’t be able to function at all. Sad.

I like how the picture used for the story is says ‘chini ya maji’ but not all the way chini. Typical Frank.

Is there anything a parent would not do to provide for their young family?

The morality of his hustle aside. I think Frank’s tragedy was a sudden entry into marriage. I do not know how true this is but someone on twitter A said if you think you are ready to marry someone, stay with them daily for a week and see if you still want them around you.

Or better still take a roadtrip to Rwanda with them. If at the hotel reception when you are signing here and there they still want to hold your hand, them probably marrying them wont be that bad.

But i beg not to be quoted because this is my utopian hypothetical. Nothing from experience. Which makes me ask, how did you know you wanted to marry the person you are currently married to now?

I am of this school of thought as well. Road trips, especially long ones, have a way of removing masks. Given how much I hate being on the road for hours though, should the time come I shall entice a ninja to climb a mountain with me…another place you just have got to be your absolute self.

I heard my cousin who is my age mate got married. Well I wasnt invited because it was introductions closely followed by come we stay. I think the plan i shall meet the hubby one day in the future.. I was so bothered…. I mean everyone ive practically even tried to date did not feel like the one…How did they know. How do people just know this stuff. Ama its just a choice,someone asks and you just say yes without overthinking it.

Not just a road trip. Any trip, even by plane to another city. The aim is to remove the person from their comfort zone. Or the place you guys normally meet, or have been meeting for the time you are dating. I know lots of relationships that broke up once guys came back from holidays and trips. And it’s for this reason that these trips should be made before engagements and not be made as honeymoons. This way, many marriages and unions will be saved from pre-mature deaths.

“Sometimes. I miss how she challenged me to be better at work and even as a person. During the time we were together I grew. Friendship came before love for the two of us. We still talk and laugh. We don’t hate each other.”

He sees his son all the time. When he talks about his son he smiles that sweet boyish smile……………glad that they are still friends and he sees the son.

“You have to stop selling weed. It’s not who we are. It’s not how I raised you. It’s wrong. If you want money I can be giving you money, but you are not a drug dealer.”……………………………..aren’t mothers everything? God bless this Mum.

Im just wondering, if she was aware that he did weed (at least smoke it) before they got married, and she still got pregnant and even moved in, why would she leave later on discovering he was still doing weed??

I really want to hear what the women in this series have to say.. Like what is their version of events??

Do they ever vanish completely ama they observe from a distance…what is known as “orbiting.” They are like stalkers always wanting to have that connection even if it is from a distance. It is annoying. What a child needs is to be nurtured and cared for, to be provided for.
Deadbeats should know that the kids they sired CANNOT be raised by proxy. If you’re not actively participating in the provision and growth of a child you’ve sired..it makes you a sperm donor and you’ll be treated the same way a sperm donor is treated. End of.

Facts: Marry in your 20s, you will be divorced in your 30s.
Marry in your 30s with no ethos you will be divorced in your 40s.
Marry in your 40s and behave as though you’re in your 30s with no values you will be divorced in your 40s.

(For all the old guys at the back reading us from country clubs, ‘drop him’ doesn’t mean give him a lift. It means kill him.) Haha…
The Old Chaps must also be discussing how In a Kikuyu home you would rather sell Cocaine or Meth or whatever and not Weed. Fangi?
I think of him as a provider and yes, the wife had other reasons for leaving!!!

This sounds like some American rapper speaking on how they had to sell a little weed before they made it. He even referenced the love for his mother like most African American males who are raised by their mothers
Good read

Boffing :- Pronounced ‘booofiiiingg’
Slack for sleeping naked and doing jiggy and hitting it ndindindi with another naked body while enjoying the terrain and escarpments. Word often found in sheng and in bikozulu narrations.

Going all the way to moyale for weed shit that’s on another level. Call it loving your side hustle hahaha.
I feel sorry for Frank for being left for a petty crime…he has changed for the better now she should come back home. Though we ladies we are complicated…we will get mad about tiny things and not bring them up. Wait for them to pile then when we can’t have it anymore we leave you for the tiniest stupidest mistake you make asap! As if we were waiting for that opportunity lol.

He was a bystander in life when fate veered off its path and hit him with a wife. Nice read as always. Unfortunately that’s how most men settle down. They don’t have time to process the impending transition and what it means.

Let’s call a spade a spade, Frank is a drug dealer who has actively contributed to ruining many people’s future . And that lame excuse of selling drugs to provide for his family is a lame one. Why couldn’t he open a car wash or a butchery?

And I don’t know why weed smokers think that they are better than cocaine/ heroine addicts but the truth is that if you cannot go a day without smoking weed you are a drug addict.

I will not applaud him for the means that he used to make others meet, but his sense of responsibility and devotion to his family at his age is something – him selling weed is a question of morality, but that does not solve any household economics puzzle……if we do not condemn public money looters, then this one is not a worthy candidate since he is also fending for his family. I mean, isn’t he as devoted as the one who was sneaking his daughter from KNH?

For me, here I see a face with eyes focused on being the provider and taking the bullet for the family….I also see him choking from the lowly paying corporate job with unending societal expectations, and unrealistic demands from her which would be polished with an age card and all………a soul under siege

“fate veered off its path and hit him with a wife”. Thank you.
You must have conditioned me somehow, I always look forward to reading the next one it’s like i am hooked on weed or something. Like Frank i can’t stop, next Tuesday seems so far.

For a moment thought the stash wouldn’t make it to Nairobi and they would get conned or something along those lines…
And now,I don’t know if am a bad person for having held my breath all through hoping he does not get caught.hehe

Wow!Nice read.Funny how the wife never seemed to be satisfied and kept on pushing the guy for more and more yet she used to see his payslips.Was she working?Was he supporting the man in paying for some bills?I feel it was a very harsh punishment to leave because of the discovery that he was selling weed.But most marriages are over before they are officially over.What is termed as the reason is just a tip of the ice berg.All the best Frank and keep on seeing your son.You may fail to be a good husband but strive to be a good father.You seem to have good entrepreneurial skills.Think of something legit that you can do to supplement your pay check.It may not be morally wrong to be a pedi depending with how you argue it out but it is illegal.You will find someone who will support you.

It is funny how most of us marry. You are huko Eating life and suddenly you are a father and husband. You are tempted sneak out in the night never to be seen again but somehow you stay through.
Someday we shall write these stories.

I like Frank, he is an entrepreneur. He saw a need, he filled it. You shall rise again. I am not one to advise on marriage but.. you might drift back to each other’s arms again. Na ni Juja wapi, the Juja I know is dull and boring

What a read. I actually though he was narrating this from jail……thank God he went back to banking and earning an “honest living”. His mami left the relationship kitambo, the weed she found was just a catapult into an already bad situation.
I am totally enjoying this series from the men, sana sana.

I really hope Biko ran this story by his lawyer coz all this time I was thinking this could cause a big deal of trouble for him and more so Frank. and for Frank, he did what needed to be done at the time to keep his family happy. Good read as always

Whoa! What a gripping tale!
I hope better days for Frank. Business is great except for the kind that will negatively impact another human’s life.
He sounds so bored of his banker job, like he’s just doing things robotically. I think he should try to pick a worthwhile hustle; whether it is farming capsicum, selling cars etc and slowly wean himself from ties and crappy clientele. He’s 27, still young…has the drive..he should get out and follow a profession that he is not half-hearted about.
I see no reason why he and his wife should remain separated though. That being said, the present day woman has more choices than our parents or grandparents ever had, and they are not as indecisive as the women before were. They check out long before they do so physically. They put up with piling BS and then one day it’s like BOOM! The flower of weed is the one that ends up breaking the camel’s back. Next thing you know, she’s hopped on a plane to some random country or she’s jumped into an Uber, son in tow..with no sign that she’s coming back.

Biko, your articles are like taking a whiff of the laughing gas. This week I had to use a highlighter for all the hilarious bits. ‘Charcoal or capsicum’, ‘drop him’ and the kasarani swimming pool thing can’t be real surely. Plus, the teleprompter was the high point. Thank you for this!

A mixture of emotions on this one.. Felt like a scene out of Power (the series). Having witnessed the effects of weed- the lying, the stealing, the violence, the hopelessness in a loved one, I can’t feel sorry for Frank…I’d have left too… nonetheless, I wish him better days and best days- if he’s already better.

ION: How about some nice/positive stories about working marriages? Give hope to some of us…some of me.

a nice piece but i have this feeling the bank must have dealt you a dirty hand for you to accord them a venue to deal.i can think of many other places to do the joint.a hotel the canjo or what have you!.

Captivating! “… fate veered off its path and hit him with a wife”
Makes one think that wives are bad and that we should avoid them. Are wives really bad?
What happened to them being soulmates and the humans you leave your mother’s house to stay with, sleep by her warmth and sire descendants, sons and daughters of the soil with; happily?

Frank reminds me of my ex boyfriend. He had this thing with weed and we’d fight about it a lot! Maybe that was just his go-to therapy? I’ll never get to know. I wish I was more open to talking about his reasons for using …. I was too uptight & young to even consider having a talk on things weed.

And here I am asking myself where the hell money will come from. Frank should be a business man. Not a teller. He’s giving me ideas. His life is a dream for most white collar workers. To have a job and a side hustle that makes you more than your job? That’s a dream. Plus the adventure. Most of us have a routine we stick to on a daily basis for thirty years and we never step out of it. We’re too scared to try something new. It takes balls to do something else other than our usual routine.

The nutritionist part was funny. Haha, ati the child was acting funny.

Captivating! “… fate veered off its path and hit him with a wife”
Makes one think that wives are bad and that we should avoid them. Are wives really bad?
What happened to them being soulmates and the humans you leave your mother’s house to stay with, sleep by her warmth and sire descendants, sons and daughters of the soil with; happily forever?

I come here every Tuesday with a deliberate agenda. I’m 38 years single mother to a 10 year old. I have statistical avoided my first divorce. When I read about these men, it reminds me why I choose the single path, it has no expectations, no disappointments and alot of peace of mind. The day I decide to scout this will not be the place because you seem to only speak to boys and not men with alot of life experiences, someone who has matured and reinvented himself through the process of marriage, the turbulence, the good if any. Speak to older men, I beg you, aki even if it’s just for me.

As I read this I kept thinking of how people live a double life and one may not know who they are dealing with! Reminds of those good stories of entrepreneurs who started off hawking sweets, or charcoal, or biscuits or shoes and worked so hard, now they own supermarkets. Their stories are retold with great admiration. Then one day you hear the REAL story. Anyway, I hope more people will donate blood.

“He was going to dismember him and spread his limbs all over the city; an arm in Ngong, a leg in Uthiru, another leg in a farm in Kitengela, a head buried near Kamiti – his body parts a homicidal jigsaw puzzle.”
A master piece it is.Keep up Biko!

Not just a road trip. Any trip, even by plane to another city. The aim is to remove the person from their comfort zone. Or the place you guys normally meet, or have been meeting for the time you are dating. I know lots of relationships that broke up once guys came back from holidays and trips. And it’s for this reason that these trips should be made before engagements and not be made as honeymoons. This way, many marriages and unions will be saved from pre-mature deaths.

Business blows up in Kahawa and Juja. Their clientele are mostly university students, touts and drivers. Word goes around that there is some good weed doing the rounds. Everybody wants it.
Hahaha .yaani this is what it takes to get weed to Juja

Gentlemen, if you’re a regular stoner never ever let your girlfriend or wife know about it. Especially if she doesn’t know it’s effects or experimented that one time with her friends and never smoked it again. It doesn’t matter if she used to stone but quit later on due to personal reasons. A stoner hardly gets into an intimate relationship with other stoners except sharing a joint or plug. There’s always a chance that it will be used against you.

My bro once asked me if I’ve ever stoned…I said yes… from his look I knew the ‘stoning’ he was talking about is different from the one I onced did in high school.. and am in my tender age of 35..
Speaking of raising families.. I respect that dude.. wrong business venture but hardworking all the same..

Isn’t it possible that this lady left because the guy was deceitful and involved in illegal activity? She asked him to stop but he disregarded her concerns and broke her trust by continuing to deal behind her back. Clearly it was a dangerous gig. He could’ve gotten arrested. And it was nice of him to provide, but what would’ve happened if he had been convincted? Fired from his legit job? How would he have fancied explaining to his son one day about why he was in jail? This woman set him on the straight and narrow because she was strong enough to set a boundary and enforce it. And the fact that they are buddies and he sees his son all the time means that her leaving wasn’t malicious. I think there was love in that decision.

The punishment for this son of a woman is too harsh (I mean, he was trying to make his family ‘comfortable ‘) I hope he reconciles with his baby momma…ION, weed should be legalized as it is a cure to many diseases.

Capturing read, I know cos I read until the very end! Being the pedantic sod that I am, one thing bugs me….the ka-pregnancy test had one red line instead of two?! I have put it down to poetic licence and moved on

Her dad was a badass, never smiled with anyone in the estate as should dads who have sexy daughters because when you smile with these phallic-excitable boys they will take it as an invitation, open season to start speaking to your daughter. They will get too familiar. So he always scowled, ignoring Frank and other young types in the estate. But Frank is the type of guy who slips through the eye of the needle silently. ” me and frank tuko hivi☝️…. Don’t know why we love the adrenaline of protective fathers and their beautiful daughters.

Haha..the announcement got me.I have had a hearty laugh.
Again,the guy was so lucky he wasn’t caught&I agree,the wife leaving was a little overboard.I’d have stayed.Nice piece Niko.The male edition is thrilling. II wonder who will say our stories from our perspective.. Blessings to you and yours

She did the right thing to leave. He’s a deceitful person who justifies criminal behaviour. He wants easy money, and will soon be roped in onto another illegal and dangerous deal. He wasn’t honest with her about his financial situation, most likely lied to her from the beginning how much he really earned, and had to keep lying and get into criminal activities to feed that lie. We all know how that story goes. You keep digging deeper and deeper to feed your original lie.

He admits she made him a better person, and this shows that if she had known his true financial situation, then she might have been someone who could have not been as demanding as he paints her. It’s not her fault or their oopsie pregnancy that started all this, it was his greed that found a channel to get fed!

The next day Frank applies for leave. A week later, they go downtown and hop into a ratty Moyale-bound bus, the six of them spread all over the loud bus in order not to arouse any suspicion. They are all graduates.

I relate to this. So pathetic. the creme de la creme of this country have nothing to celebrate for their sweat and the millions they spent to get an 8.4.4 education And have to go this extent to provide for their loved ones

This is a very nicely written article. My type of read. Apt descriptions especially when they arrived in Moyale and their journey to Ethiopia. I feel enriched. I just nourished my mind. Well, done, Biko!

Your articles Biko are always so insightful. You are able to capture the reader’s mind from the first sentence all through to the last paragraph. Perhaps your best skill is the way you address various themes and subjects without losing rack of the original story. May be you should write something on the religion in Kenya. These prophets and bishops that are recently trending for all the wrong reasons.
I hear there is one that is allegedly brainwashing his faithful followers into leaving their businesses into heir management. Then another one in South Africa is raising the dead. Click the link below to read what a particular Kenyan writer had to say on this new booming Religion Business in Kenya.https://danixkamau.wordpress.com/2019/03/06/righteous-men-of-god/

What a great read! I’m not sure how exactly I found your blog, but I feel like I am right in the conversation as I read each story. This one is a prime example of miscommunication (conversations that were never had between the husband and wife to set the tone of the relationship) and unmet expectations. I hope that they can reconcile.

Now this is a man right here… look at it from the brighter side, the weed smokers got high and they were happy, he provided well for the family, heck even the cancer patient started gaining some muscle. Plus nobody died.

A few of us with such drive still roam the earth

Ps,

Ladies, for the love of God please don’t just reveal that you missed the Ps so casually, Prepare the man (especially ones still in bedsitters and come we stay arrangements). I bet a good number of fellas get heart attacks, stroke, ulcers and general trauma from such sudden revelations.

But she knew he smoked the damn thing even before moving. Maybe its true that you could be in a marriage that was long gone but still be sleeping on the same bed,just maybe!! Gonna marry some day though!!

There is encouraging your man to work hard and aim for higher, then there is this. The wife knew the man’s salary was modest but there she was , making fancy demands, beyond what he could afford. E.g, she wanted a hospital of her choice to deliver in, despite knowing that on her husband’s salary it would be hard. She is part of what drove him to do this.

Wow, this is the soberest read about weed I’ve ever come across. It almost makes stoning a cool thing in a badass way! Frank is smart, he’s wasting his brains as a cashier, but I don’t mean that he takes up selling weed in replacement of his white collar job.
I shall not write the rest here… So how does frank balance weed smoking and such an active life? If he managed, then how do people flip into addiction and zombie mode?
The buzz in my mind right now of the thoughts that are crisscrossing it…. As for his wife, I am not sure if it was a good thing for her to leave or not, Frank has tale tale signs of a responsible, present Father. something that is lacking in their generation of husbands and fathers. Frank is a keeper.

Biko played it too safe. The pic on this story should have been of weed (carefully rolled placed on top of a ka 10k bunch of Kshs) or a woman, child in hand facing the battery side (if you are reading this on a phone like I am) with her belongings tagged on the other hand one shoe on another carried by the child. All this drawn in silhouette.

Life thrust marriage at Frank, like you would a bribe in the hands of an unwilling official. He didn’t go looking for it like some men who plan engagements with a ring, bended knees and starry eyes. He was a bystander in life when fate veered off its path and hit him with a wife.

people have all sorts of superstitions on cannabis usage and its potential medical benefits. the perception people have if you keep locks is clear. Real stoners know that if you look hard enough, there’s levels to this s***, frankly and sadly most stoners don’t know s*** about what they smoking; nothing about the strain, its effects, flavours, medical effects THC, CBD ratio. #shashaman(also known as Ethiopian Kush – sativa) ya ukweli from Ethiopia, is topped only by the modern designer strains like OG or GSC. pole sana Mr. bank teller, I wish you took pride in your expertise in matters bud; and not let a bunch of ignorant opinions with no basis in fact mess up things for you, considering the hustle takes years to build and one foolish opinion to ruin it all.